


Pharmercy Holidays Event 2018

by Theoroark



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-20 14:18:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17024226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theoroark/pseuds/Theoroark
Summary: A collection of Pharmercy drabbles for the Holidays event.





	1. Ugly Holiday Wear

When Fareeha picked up the package that had been dropped at her front door, she noted the lack of return or mailing address. Her adrenaline kicked in and her training took over. Neither she nor Angela were particularly conspicuous public figures, not anymore, but there were those who would very badly want to gain access to the Anubis facility or Dr. Ziegler’s notes. Fareeha set the package down slowly, carefully, and as she did she saw the purple skull stamped on the side of the cardboard. She groaned and picked the box back up, balancing it on her hip as she let herself into the apartment.

“Angela,” she called. “Your ‘friend’ sent you something.”

Angela looked up from her seat at the kitchen table, her brow furrowed in confusion until Fareeha showed her the purple skull. Then, she lit up and practically danced over to grab the box from Fareeha. 

“She said she was going to get me a gift, but I thought she just meant that picture of Jesse passed out that she texted me!”

Fareeha rolled her eyes and passed Angela a pair of scissors. “Yeah. Having a terrorist lurking around one of our closest friends while he’s incapacitated. Joy to the world, and all that.”

Angela made a grumbling noise, but was still smiling as she cut the box open. “She wouldn’t hurt McCree. She thinks he’s funny.”

“Truly, an airtight reassurance.” Angela started to form a rebuttal, but then she opened the box and gasped. Fareeha stood and peered over Angela’s shoulder, then looked between the box and her wife.

“What. What is that?”

“I told her hers and her girlfriend’s looked really cute.” Angela lifted the cloth up and held it in front of the two of them. Fareeha examined the blue sweater, with a menorah and the words “IT’S LIT” embroidered on its front.

“She got you… a tacky sweater.” 

“A tacky Hannukkah sweater, Fareeha!” Angela clutched the sweater to her chest and squealed, and Fareeha looked past her. 

“She gave you two, it looks like.”

Angela pulled the sweater she was holding over her head, and reemerged, rumpled and hair staticked-out, to see Fareeha handing her another blue sweater, this one with the text “DECK THE HALLS WITH MATZO BALLS.” Angela looked down at it, then gave Fareeha devious grin.

“She didn’t give me two sweaters, Fareeha. She gave each of us one.” 

“Are you.” Fareeha stared at her wife, and the near-maniacal look in her eye. “You’re serious.”

“Come on, Fareeha! Sombra’s girlfriend wore one with her!”

“Sombra’s girlfriend murders people for a living!”

“But she looks cute and coordinates with her geef while she does it!” Angela grabbed the sweater and pressed it to Fareeha’s chest. Fareeha looked down at it and sighed.

“I can’t believe you even like these,” she said. “When Sombra does puns, they’re cute, but when I do puns, you’re never sleeping with me again.”

“I’m not sleeping with Sombra. And,” Angela batted her eyelashes. “I am sleeping with you. So…”

Fareeha shook her head and took the sweater. “You’re ridiculous,” she told Angela, as she pulled the sweater over her head.

“And you’re adorable.” Angela planted a kiss on her cheek, then fished out her holovid and turned the camera to selfie mode. “Now come on. I know we’re cuter than Sombra and Widow, let’s prove it.”


	2. Fun in the Snow

“You know, Captain Amari,” Hana said. “You can go home.”

 

Fareeha had been staring at the pink cannon she had been working on for so long that when she looked up, it took a minute for Hana to come into focus. When she did, however, she had a forced smile and her hands behind her back. “You’ve been here for hours,” Hana said. “And I know I can figure out the rest of this. So like, don’t worry, okay? You can go home.”

 

Fareeha did not point out the irony of Hana telling her that, when she had told Hana to go home hours ago herself. She had thought Hana HAD gone home. But Hana’s persistence was exactly why she had taken the repair on herself. Hana was a good soldier. She would devote all her time, all her energy, to getting the job done, all by herself. She would not ask for help. She would not be a nineteen year old, who should take time to hang out with one of her partners or play the dumb video games she loved, unless her commanding officer forced her to be one.

 

Some of the hair had fallen out of Fareeha’s ponytail and she pushed it off her sweaty forehead. “It’s fine, Hana,” she said. “Now go home. That’s an order.”

 

Hana folded her arms. “I’m not going–” 

 

She was cut off by a thwack against the window. Hana’s eyes widened and she spun around. “What was that?!”

 

“I don’t know.” Fareeha stood, wincing at the pain in her sore knees as she did. There was another thwack as she made her way from the mech to the window, and it was too dark to see anything out of it, but she could tell something as hitting it. She undid the latch and stuck her head out, and was met with a snowball to the face.

 

“FAREEHA!” Fareeha brushed the snow from her eyes and now she could make out Angela on the ground, mittened hands covering her mouth. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know–”

 

“It’s– what are you doing, Angela?” Fareeha could hear Hana giggling behind her, and she was struggling to keep a straight face herself.

 

“You were working too late,” Angela yelled up at her. “And you weren’t answering your phone, so. I had to get your attention some way.”

 

“Well, good job.”

 

Angela was only partially lit by the lights of the Gibraltar workshop, but Fareeha could still make out her red cheeks and sheepish smile. “Tell you what,” Angela yelled. “How about you come down here and get even with me yourself?”

 

Angela was wearing a cream-colored peacoat and thick black tights. Her hair was loose and framing her face perfectly. Snowflakes were dancing around her. Fareeha sighed and shut the window. “Come on, Hana,” she said, as she grabbed her coat from off the desk. 

 

Hana had picked up Fareeha’s tools in her absence, and frowned and looked up from her work. “She was just talking to you,” she pointed out.

 

“The ambush I have planned requires two people, Song. And you’re one of the best shooters on the team. So?”

 

Hana was a good soldier. A great one. But she was also nineteen and couldn’t resist flattery or a good prank. She set down her wrench with a grin and grabbed her coat when Fareeha tossed it to her. “Ay-ay, Captain.”


	3. Holiday Traditions

“Okay,” Ingrid instructed them. “Olivia hasn’t won before. And she seemed a bit upset about it last year. So.” She dropped an almond in the small glass bowl in the bottom left corner of the tray, and pointed to it. “We have to make sure she gets this one, alright?”

 

Fareeha and Brigitte nodded dutifully and began to spoon rice pudding into all the bowls. Ingrid looked over at Angela, sitting on the kitchen counter with a cup of eggnog, and sighed. “Sorry to ruin the Christmas magic for you, dear.”

 

“I kind of guessed,” Angela said, flashing an apologetic smile. “I mean, I got it the first time I had Christmas dinner with you guys, and you and Torbjörn were so enthusiastic about it, and people kind of did that stuff to orphans a lot…”

 

Out of the corner of her eye, Fareeha sawa Brigitte wince. Angela said it calmly, matter-of-factly, as she did most things. Angela was not a hard-hearted person by any stretch of the imagination. But Angela had seen incredible misery in her life and while she was not desensitized to it, she did treat it with a kind of normalcy that would be foreign to someone like Brigitte, who had only recently been anything other than utterly safe and never been anything other than loved.

 

Ingrid, however, just sighed and shook her head. “You were such a… worldly, child,” she said, and suddenly Fareeha could perfectly picture a young Angela at the grand dining room table in the next room, a polite and practiced smile on her face as the Lindholms cooed over her. “We should have known.”

 

“I knew too,” Brigitte informed her mother.

 

“Yeah, after she told you.” Brigitte scowled and threw a spare almond at Angela. Angela giggled and picked it up from the counter, and held it aloft.

 

“I got the almond! Where’s my prize?”

 

“Right here.” Fareeha set down her pot of pudding, and kissed her wife. Brigitte and Ingrid groaned in unison, and Brigitte threw more almonds at them.

 

Torbjörn chose this moment to come in. He looked around the kitchen, bemused. “What’s all this, then?”

 

“Fareeha and Angela are being corny,” Brigitte said. Torbjörn chuckled.

 

“Sorry, ladies,” he said. “There’s only room for one corny couple in this house.” And on cue, Ingrid bent down and kissed him. The remaining women groaned, Ingrid shrugged unapologetically, and her husband laughed. 

 

“Alright, alright. Are we having dessert or not?” 

 

“Of course, dear.” Ingrid handed him a tray, and pointed at the cup in the corner. He nodded and headed to the dining room, and the rest of them gathered the remaining pudding bowls and followed.

 

Olivia did not take long to find her treat. “I WON!” she yelled, startling her sister into dropping her fork. Ingrid lifted a hand to her mouth to hide her laughter. Olivia jumped from seat and took a victory lap around the table. “I finally won!”

 

“You sure did, sweetheart,” Torbjörn said. He was barely doing a better job stifling his laughter than his wife. “Do you want your prize now?” Olivia nodded vigorously, still clutching the almond as though her life depended on it. Torbjörn sighed and pushed away from the table, gripping his armrests tightly.

 

“I’ll go get it,” Fareeha said quickly. She knew he was having bad back pain, and terrible migraines. She quickly stood and headed towards his workshop before he could object or insist, even though she heard him call, “Fareeha!”

 

She was almost at the end of the hall, well away from the noise of the dining room, when he caught up with her. “Damn long legs,” he huffed as she turned, surprised.

 

“Torbjörn? Is something wrong?”   
  


“No, no, I just–” He held up a finger as he caught his breath, then righted himself. “I just wanted to talk to you, Fareeha.” Her brow creased and he quickly added, “There’s nothing wrong! It’s just… I know, even though neither of you are Christian, this time of year can be… hard.”

 

“Hard,” Fareeha repeated.

 

“Even when we love our family, it can be hard not to be reminded of the family we’ve lost, around them. But I want you to know, Fareeha.” He took a step forward and took her hand, and patted it. “You are our family.You’re always welcome here. And I’m not just saying that because…”

 

He trailed off and a lump rose in Fareeha’s throat. He was a good man. They teased him and he grumbled non-rebuttals, but at the end of the day, he had come out of Overwatch with the most left to his name, and that was not an accident. Torbjörn Lindholm had a wealth of family and friends because he was, under his grumpy exterior, a generous, thoughtful, loving man. Torbjörn Lindholm was a good man. And Fareeha could see, in the way he could not say her name, that her mother’s absence hurt him. And Fareeha didn’t want to hurt him, not when he had given so much.

 

But what good would telling him do, she thought. Would it help him to know his two old friends had lied to him and locked themselves in a tomb and were hunting another old friend? He wouldn’t be able to talk to her, wouldn’t go to help her, not when he still had so much to lose. All she would give him was confused grief and guilt. 

 

So she knelt down and hugged him instead. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

 

He patted her back and she involuntarily sniffed and was angry that now he knew she was crying. “Of course, Fareeha,” he said. “Anytime. Now.” He let go of her and Fareeha stood, quickly wiping her eyes. “Let’s go get Olivia’s prize. She’s practically bouncing off the walls, waiting for it.” 

 

Fareeha nodded and followed Torbjörn, half-listening as he told her about the trinket he had designed as a prize this year. Of course he made all his many, many grandchildren their own presents, she thought. Torbjörn gave and he gave and he gave. It was what he did. And the best she had to offer was not giving him her burden.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @tacticalgrandma on tumblr/twitter if you want to talk to me there.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and any comments/kudos would be so appreciated!


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